


The Places You’ll Find Me Hiding

by 60sec400



Series: Tumblr Prompts [5]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, Bombs, Dick Grayson is Robin, Gen, Hospitals, Hurt Dick Grayson, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Singing, Snapshots, Sporadic, hazy setting, the team is worried
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 16:26:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11993550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/60sec400/pseuds/60sec400
Summary: Robin is injured on the job with the team. Wally worries they can't get him back in time. Dick wakes up in the hospital. The cave. He's not sure. It's hazy. He feels fuzzy. Three months have passed.





	The Places You’ll Find Me Hiding

**Author's Note:**

> Anonymous asked: Could you write something set in season one or around then of young justice where dick gets almost fatally injured and the team doesn't know if they can get him help in time? Maybe the tram's reaction and dick brushing it off as nothing when he wakes up (cause he's a self sacrificing moron)

Robin leaned down, not worrying about the dirt. His costume was already ripped and shredded in a few places and the last thing he needed to worry about was more dirt. This one was probably done in anyway. It didn’t make a difference. The little girl looked up at him, brown eyes hidden behind soot and dust. They’d just evacuated a bunch of civilians from a hazard zone, right as a bomb went off. They still hadn’t located the girl’s parents, something that was causing him great worry and guilt. So he found himself leaning down to become eye level with her.

“Hi,” he said, smiling a little. He must’ve looked terrifying, what with all the dirt on his face, because she blinked and turned her face away, her mouth stretching down into a thin line. He cleared his throat. He could feel the team moving around him. He could hear the sirens and people talking, but he couldn’t. He was focused right now. Because this was a kid, another kid, who was sitting around sirens and a crime scene with a blanket on them and no parents around to make everything better.

Wind blew around them, tossing dust from his hair.

He tried again.

“ _Once I was happy, but now I’m forlorn_ ,” he begins to sing, trying to keep his voice steady. He clears his throat dramatically. “Whoa, whoa. Bad, bad, bad tune. Lemme try again.” He made a real effort to make his throat clearing loud. The girl looks back up at him.

 _“Once I was happy, but now I’m forlorn/ Like an old coat that is… tattered,”_ he brings his hands to his chest in woe, _“and worn. Left on this world to fret and to mourn/ Betrayed.”_ A pause. _“By a maid.”_ Another pause. _“In her teens.”_

The little girl giggles, covering her mouth to stifle the laugh.

 _“The girl that I loved she was handsome and swell/ And I tried all I knew her to please,”_ he turns his face down in pretend sadness, cupping his hands around his cheeks. “ _But I could not please her one quarter so well/ As the man… on the flying trapeze.”_ He drags the word out, turning his frown into a smile. The girl had her attention fully on him, her lips parted in a slight ‘O’. Her eyes are wide with wonder.

Robin springs into the air, throwing his arms up, and smiles. “ _He'd fly through the air with the greatest of ease! That daring young man on the flying trapeze!”_ He twirls around in a circle, landing on one knee and holding his hand out to the little girl. “ _His movements were graceful, all girls he could please/ And my love he purloined away!_ Now, that’s a funny word purloined. You know what that means?”

The little girl shakes her head vigorously, holding the blanket they’d given her close to her shoulders. Robin sits up, tapping his finger against his chin.

“Hmmm, you know the word steal?”

“Mmhmm,” the girl murmurs, smiling up at him.

“Well, it’s like a fancy word for steal. This guy just, like, took her. How un-asterous is that?”

She blinks up at him. He pauses, and reaches back to rub his neck. “Right. Right. That would make even less sense than asterous.”  

“ _Bomb_!”

Robin turns to watch the crowd of people surge away toward them. They come screaming past, a mess of tangled bodies and limbs. Robin unsnaps his cape and swings it around the girl, pushing her to the ground. She lands face first in the dirt, but completely covered by the cape. He doesn’t even duck. He jumps over the log they’d been seated on. There must be more people. He’s right. There are.

 He runs toward where the first crater is, and sure enough they’ve uncovered another bomb. He hears someone yelling at him, but he sees a fallen man. He’s partially covered in dirt and Robin doesn’t hesitate to run toward him, to make sure he can get him out. They’re too close to the bomb for either of them to make it. But if someone has to, it’ll be the civilian. Always the civilian.

He pulls the man out, they’re both tugging and there are people yelling and Robin thinks his ears are ringing. For some reason the song keeps playing in his head. Over and over. The daring young man. Robin pushes it back. “Get out of here!” he yells, throwing his hands to push the man forward. He stumbles away, landing in the reaching arms of more civilians. Robin spins around one last moment. Everything has taken seconds and then…

There’s a blinding light  and a large boom and then a rush of hot air. He’s been thrown back. Past the log. Past the little girl. His face and body are hot and he thinks he can feel his skin simmering. He lands on broken concrete, something hot is sticking in him and his head snaps against metal. Smoke billows up into the air and then… nothing. But the girl is safe.

He never found out her name. He hopes her parents are okay.

**][][][**

There’s a faint beeping around him. It’s like a humming and he knows, arguably, that there shouldn’t be beeping at the circus. The circus never _beeped_. It’s a funny thought, but simply not plausible. He turns back to his routine. There’s no one there. There’s just the swing of the bar and himself, but nothing makes noise. The beeping gets louder.

He just wants to practice in peace.

He glances up at the roof of the circle tent. It’s fading in color, as if the red is being bleached from above. The whole scene begins to take on a pale color, like a faded photograph. Eventually, the top of the tent completely fades to nothing, the lines of the tent becoming the lines of ceiling. The beeping gets louder and Dick is blinking his eyes, not even knowing when they closed. He tries to move, but pain shoots up his leg and he can’t breathe because there’s a tube down his throat.

His eyes wide, panic beginning to settle in. The beeping gets louder. He was just in the circus. Were his parents okay? The word stills looks faded, papery white and like he’s looking throat a thin film. Everything is blurry.

There’s a dark spot that springs into his vision, a dark spot that is speaking at him. No. Not at him, but in his direction. It’s leaning toward something that’s white too. And then it disappears. Dick tries to get up, but then there’s pressure on his shoulders. Where was he? How did he get here?

Where are his parents?

A flash of blinding light bounces around his vision and then the top of a circus tent. Dick blinks it out of view. There’s red hair above him, leaning over. The dark spot in his vision suddenly becomes more humanoid.

“M…om,” he croaks. She was okay?

He doesn’t find out.

**][][][**

He wakes again, more coherent. There’s no tube down his throat this time, and he’s sitting a little higher up. He’s somewhere. Well, he’s not sure. His vision is still blurry and faded. He thinks about old movies and… photographs. He shifts around a little. He’s in a bed, not a comfy one, but it feels okay. He shifts around.

“Dick? I need you to stop moving?”

He blinks up, trying to see around the film in his eyes. The shape is a little pale and with dark hair.

“Dad?” he asks, tugging at his arm to reach forward.

“Not dad,” the voice says, leaning back a little. “It’s… Bruce.” There’s a pause before he says the name, as if he’s unsure.

Dick blinks again, tilting his head. Bruce. Yes. That’s a name he knows. He nods a little. “Oh. Okay,” he heaves in a breath. “Yes.”

“Dick?” Something blurry waves over the film and his face. “Do you feel any pain?”

 He tugs away, confused. Pain? His leg feels weird, almost… muffled. It’s a little fuzzy, like when you take a shower in the winter and then after a while you can’t touch anything really soft. Your hands feel dry and fuzzy. He twists his leg a little, and something weird and… sharp shoots up his leg. He doesn’t even realize he’s shouted until there’s something putting pressure on his leg and someone saying something to him.

He doesn’t know what it is.

He just wants to practice alone.

**][][][**

The third time he wakes up, the film is still there but a little faded. He can see a little clearer. There’s a beeping again, but it’s stable and constant. He turns his head to look around. A hospital room?

“Dick?”

He jerks his head in the other direction.

“Bruce,” he says clearly. “Bruce. You… where?”

He feels something resting on his shoulder, and then a hand or something swiping his hair from his forehead. “How do you feel?”

It is Bruce then. That voice. He knows that voice. It’s gruffer and a little sadder than normal.

“Fuzzy?” Dick replies, blinking away. His vision is still blurry and faded and he feels a little weird. Shouldn’t he be seeing clearly?

Bruce lets out a choked sort of quiet sob. It’s barely noticeable, but Dick catches on even if his ears are ringing. Dick feels Bruce rub his head again and then pull away. A chair to his left creaks noisily as someone, presumably Bruce, sits in it.

“What do you remember?”

Dick blinks a little, trying to clear his head. His vision is beginning to annoy him, so he closes his eyes instead. “A bomb? The… girl? Is she o’kay?”

“Your cape saved her. He hair was a little singed and the bottom of her shoes burned a little. But she’ll be okay. They found her parents. Dick, are you sure you’re alright?” Bruce sounds very concerned, and Dick feels the man lean closer. He’s not sure how but he can.

“Vision,” Dick slurs. “Eyes.”

Bruce stands up quickly, shoving the chair into the wall behind him. “Leslie?”

Dick winces at the sharpness in Bruce’s voice, pulling away. He keeps his eyes closed, even when he hears shuffling movement and someone pulling up alongside him. Finger forces his eyes open, and he follows suit. There’s a bright light in his eyes, moving between them.

“No reaction in the pupils,” a woman’s soft voice says. It’s a little panicked though. “Flash blindness. There’s no damage to the retina or cornea, but his vision is going to be a little blurry for a while. Dick, can you see me?”

“Blob,” he says. It must’ve been a couple of minutes though, because there’s no sound from either the adults until Bruce mumbles something that the ringing covers up.

Dick blinks them out of existence.

**][][][**

Kid Flash watches as Robin is thrown into hard concrete and metal. His head snapping back like a ricochet. He feels his body still, and it’s the stillest he’s been in a long time, and then he’s moving. Tripping over metal and pipes and rocks and dirt. There’s a lot of screaming, people are pointing. The little girl that Robin saved is covered in his cape and is pulling herself from the dirt. She’s crying, standing up and stumbling toward Robin.

“Hey!” Wally hears Artemis yell, “Hey, hey, hey! Come toward me, toward me!”

The girl turns a little, probably toward where the Archer is standing. She begins to move toward her and then Wally moves her from his peripheral and is leaning over Dick.

“Oh god,” he whispers, choking a little on the words. “Oh god.” There’s a metal pipe twisted through Robin’s thigh. His head is bleeding a lot, and there’s a lot of dark dripping red that Wally wants to turn away from his friend. But he doesn’t. Robin’s arm is twisted a little, and clearly one finger is broken. The boy almost flew thirty feet in the air from a flash bomb that was still burning hot metal around him. He’s a little burned in places where his costume is ripped bad enough that there’s enough pale skin showing. His head is cut too, but Wally isn’t sure if that’s from before the bomb or not.

 He moves forward to grab Robin, but then M’gann is there.

“Wait,” she says, her voice a shaky. “There’s civilians.”

“But Robin, he—.”

“Kid Flash,” she whispers, bringing him down to reality a little. “I know, please, I know. But our duty—.”

“I have to help him, we can’t. I can’t just… I can’t leave him,” Wally exclaims. He tries to yell, but his voice isn’t any higher than a croak. He feels shot and tired. “We won’t get him out in time, M’gann.”

The girl reaches forward to cup Robin’s cheeks, a quiet sob escaping her lips. “I know, I know. Just… we can’t move him like this.”

Wally nods, and then turns and looks around. But the EMT’s that had been there already were moving around and already occupied. Wally wants to scream. Is no one paying attention? Heroes get hurt! They die too!

A hand rests on his shoulder. It’s Artemis. Her face looks so tired. “Called the league,” she says. “They’re on their way. Kaldur is… helping. We need to go too. I’ll stay here with Robin.”

“But—!”

“Wally,” she says sharply. “My field training for medical shit is, well, shit. You can help, so can M’gann. I’ll stay with Robin. I’ll keep the blood in. Go.”

“He won’t get help in time,” Wally argues. “The civilians don’t… they don’t—,” and he knew he couldn’t say they didn’t matter. They mattered so much, especially to Robin and to all of them, because they were heroes. It’s why they did what they did. It was their job. And they mattered to Wally too. “He won’t get help in time,” he practically sobs.  

M’gann chokes and turns away, flying toward a small group of civilians.

“Wally, you’re not helping. Panicking. He… go find someone, I don’t care, go! He’s my brother too.”

“Yeah,” he whispers. He turns without looking at Robin, because he already can’t get the imagine out of his head. He runs then, away. Toward help. Toward anything that isn’t dark red and the colors of a Robin.

Artemis turns to look at the blood, climbing as softly as she could onto the concrete. She can’t risk shifting it. She hopes that, when she goes to bed that night, the last memory of Robin that will stick to her is him singing to the little girl.

**][][][**

Dick wakes up again. This time, he can see. It’s not hazy. Or foggy. He looks around himself. He has to be in the cave. There’s a lot less white and more concrete. For some reason, that makes his head ache more. He reaches up to rub his head.

His hair is… shorter. A lot shorter. It must’ve been buzzed. He moves his fingers to touch his forehead. There’s a scar there.

How long has he been out?

He reaches down the side of the bed to feel for a buzzer. Aha. There it is. He clicks it and then waits. It isn’t long before the door is opening.

“Dick?”

It’s… M’gann actually. She’s in her human form now, probably not to scare him? He isn’t sure. She’s leaning around the door as if she’s afraid to come in. Slowly, she slips in and shuts the door behind herself. “I heard the buzzer… well… Connor did but… are you okay?”

He feels a little woozy but otherwise alright. “Bomb,” he says. “And then… I don’t know what happened.” He pauses. “Did you call me Dick?”

The girl blushes deeply. “Oh, well, Mr. Batman told us that we could… that your name was Dick. I don't understand but he says it makes sense if you lived eighty years ago.”

“Yeah,” he agrees. “Yeah it does.” He tried to move, but she pushes him down.

“Not yet! I need to call Black Canary or… or Dr. Thompkins!” she spins and pulls the door open.

“Wait! How long was I out?”

But she’s gone.

**][][][**

He wakes again. This time, the entire team is there.

They all bounce up as he opens his eyes.

“Guys?” he slurs, blinking around at them.

“Dick!” Wally exclaims, suddenly appearing in Dick’s line of vision. “You’re awake! Did you know how… how scared we were?”

“Cave?” he asks.

“Yeah, you were taken here like a month ago,” Wally says, and then slaps a hand over his mouth. Dick reaches up to feel his hair.

“Wally!” another familiar voice exclaims.

“Whoops.”

“I figured,” Dick says dryly, “When I felt my hair. Is everything okay? I was out for a month?”

The team tenses up a little. M’gann turns away and Raquel seems interested in her pants. Artemis wilts a little, falling back down into her chair. And Kaldur and Wally glance at each other almost knowingly. Only Connor seems uninterested, but Dick can see he’s tense. Zatanna bites her lip. Dick shifts awkwardly in his chair.

“Three months, actually,” Artemis finally says. She seems tired. Her hair is longer than Dick remembers. Which makes sense. The last time he saw her was three months ago.

“Three months,” he whispers, and then wilts back into the fluffy pillows. “Wow. Where… where’s Bruce?”

They glance at each other.

“He went home last night. He should be back soon. You’ve woken up more frequently,” M’gann says, smiling a little in encouragement.

“I did?” Dick asks, and he honestly can’t remember. There’s a few blurry moments. He remembers Leslie and Bruce, and then Bruce another time. There’s a faint memory of M’gann coming in, and then… he’s not sure what else. “I couldn’t see right?”

Artemis winced. “Can you see now? Dr. Thompkins said it wasn’t permanent.”

Dick blinks. “I can, yeah. Man, I wasn’t even awake for most of my recovery.”

“There’s still a while to go, Dick,” Kaldur said finally. “You’ve been asleep for three months. Recovering very slowly. You’ll have some catching up to do.”

Dick’s pretty sure that the extent of his wounds is still out of his grasp. He can’t tell, maybe it was because he was asleep, but he doesn’t feel like this is the worse he’s had. He hasn’t heard it all yet, he’s not sure if he does. So, instead, he moves to swing his legs over the bed frame. The team lunges into action, and Wally and Artemis are the ones pushing him into bed.

“What?” he yells, and then winces because his ears are ringing.

“You just woke up after three months!” Artemis snaps, shoving the blanket over him like she’s aggressively tucking him in. “Get back in bed!”

“I’m fine!”

“Dick,” Wally says, and Dick knows he’s about to get a lecture which is stupid because Wally is barely two years older. “You’re still really sick. And tired. And I can see it in your eyes you think you’re fine because you’ve had worse—.”

“This is why I wear a mask,” he interrupts. Wally keeps going.

“—but you need to stay in bed, seriously. Just a for a while longer.”

Dick hesitates and then his shoulders fall. “Fine.”

He doesn’t argue, because he knows they’re right. He knows they are, and it’s dumb. So he listens to them talk to him about life and everything he’s missed for the last three months. He eventually fades into a quiet sleep. He’s fine.

Everything will be fine.

**][][][**

When Bruce finally comes to take him home, the walk up to the stairs wears him out. The walk up the manor is tiring and he feels his ears ringing. He’s a little woozy. But it’s okay. He’s okay.

All is well.

_Fin._


End file.
